Mudslides kill four along Swiss-Italian border

Yahoo News via AFP: At least four people were killed as landslides triggered by torrential rain slammed into houses and buildings on either side of the Swiss Italian border Sunday, police and media said. In the rain-drenched southern Ticino region of Switzerland, two people died and four were injured when a mudslide slammed into a small residential building, regional police said.

On the other side of the border, a pensioner and his granddaughter were killed when another landslide engulfed a house on the Italian shores of Lake Maggiore, local media reported. Three other family members survived.

Those landslides were the latest of many to recently have hit northern Italy and southern Switzerland amid incessant rainfall over recent weeks. They also came a day after storms in southern France killed six people, including a mother and her two small sons whose car was swept away in flooding.

In Switzerland, the bodies of two local women, aged 34 and 38, were pulled Sunday from the rubble of the three-story apartment building in Davesco-Soragno, near Lugano, after being hit by the mudslide shortly before 2:30 am (0130 GMT), Ticino police said.

Another resident had returned home after the landslide hit and was unharmed, but police said they were still searching the area to make sure no one else was under the rubble. The tragedy came 10 days after a young mother and her three-year-old daughter were killed when a landslide swept away their house in the same region...

A foggy road near Ticino, shot by Luca Casartelli, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Rains slow Sri Lankan landslide search; nearly 150 feared dead

Reuters: Heavy rains hampered search operations on Friday at the site of a landslide in Sri Lanka where more than 100 people were buried under tons of mud and rubble two days ago. Fears of further landslips in the rain-sodden hills around the tea-plantation village of Haldummulla also slowed efforts to recover the dead, after a disaster that has brought offers of assistance from neighbour India and the United States.

Officials had originally put the death toll from Wednesday's landslide at more than 300 but reduced it after it emerged that many schoolchildren and plantation workers had been at a safe distance when the avalanche engulfed their homes. Latest data fron Sri Lanka's Disaster Management Centre showed that 183 people had survived out of a total of 330 who lived in the area in south-central Sri Lanka.

As soldiers and police worked to clear mounds of earth, survivors were housed in two temporary camps set up nearby. Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told parliament the cabinet had decided to help them build new homes in a safe location.

A local resident told Reuters around 150 clay and cement houses had been buried in the landslide, which was 3 km (2 miles) long and was triggered by days of heavy monsoon rains. Ravichandran Gajini, 14, said her parents had left their house before the landslide but hurried back in to retrieve documents....

China landslide kills seven

Terra Daily via AFP: Seven people died and another 20 were left missing by a landslide in China, state media reported Thursday. The landslide engulfed a village near Fuquan city in the southwestern province of Guizhou, the Xinhua news agency said.

Torrential rain complicated the rescue work, it said. Pictures showed emergency personnel levering up slabs of tiled wall. A total of 77 houses collapsed or were buried in the disaster, Xinhua said, with seven people confirmed dead and another 20 missing.

Guizhou is one of the poorest provinces in China, and renowned for its hilly topography and wet weather. Mining is one of its key industries but soil erosion is among the worst in China, with around 42 percent of the province affected, according to an official national survey in 2009....

Japan landslide: Death toll in Hiroshima climbs to 46

Australia Network News: The death toll from huge landslides in Japan's Hiroshima prefecture has risen to 46, with at least 41 people still missing. A Hiroshima police spokesman says rescuers uncovered six more bodies on Saturday morning

Emergency service personnel are continuing the search for survivors three days after torrential rains triggered the mountainside disaster. Volunteers from other parts of the country have joined the rescue effort to back up nearly 3,000 police officers, firefighters and soldiers already involved.

The rain stopped by early on Saturday but there are concerns about new landslides because the weather bureau is predicting another heavy downpour by the evening. Firefighters and soldiers are removing debris by hand where possible because of concerns about using heavy machinery....

An aerial view of Kure, Hiroshima, shot by EEIM, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Mudslides kill 11 in southwest China, 14 missing

Channel News Asia: Eleven people were killed and 14 others are still missing after mudslides swept through two villages in southwest China on Monday following days of heavy rain, state news agency Xinhua reported. Rescuers are working to retrieve people still buried after mudslides struck the villages in Yunnan province, the news agency said, citing local government.

Heavy downpours battering the mountainous province in recent days have caused several landslides, crushing houses, blocking roads and disrupting power supplies. More than 1,100 rescuers were stranded trying to reach the village of Huna in Dehong, western Yunnan, where a mudslide early Monday killed ten people, Xinhua reported.

"Victims are badly in need of relief supplies including tents and waterproof clothing," it cited local authorities as saying at a disaster relief meeting. Tents, bags of rice and generators have been sent to the area, it said....

Keith Edkins released this image of the path of Typhoon Rammassun into the public domain

Search for three missing called off in Colorado muslide

Environment News Service: Colorado emergency authorities have called off a search for three men missing after an enormous mudslide in a remote part of western Colorado. Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey said Tuesday that another slide could come down the mountainside, which is too unstable to continue the search.

A unified incident command was established Sunday between Plateau Valley Fire Department, Mesa County Road and Bridge, and the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, to handle the large mudslide incident and search for the three missing men.

The first reports of the mudslide came into the Grand Junction Regional Communication Center about 6:15 pm on Saturday, along with reports of three local Collbran/Mesa area ranchers missing.

Plateau Valley Fire Department first responded to the area of Salt Creek Road, in the area of Vega Reservoir, on the Grand Mesa. This area is east and south of the small town of Collbran, about 11 miles, located in Mesa County.

The mudslide is estimated to be about four miles long, two miles wide and about 250 feet deep, in many places. It is described as very unstable by deputies on scene, and they estimate an entire ridge has been sliding for most of Sunday...

Taiwan typhoon victims lose compensation suit

Terra Daily via AFP: A Taiwanese court on Friday rejected a group compensation claim filed by victims of a deadly typhoon in 2009 against local authorities for alleged negligence. A district court in the southern city of Kaohsiung ruled that the city government and a local township office did not have to pay Tw$590 million ($19.67 million) jointly sought by relatives of 175 people who died when their village was destroyed during Typhoon Morakot.

Morakot, the worst storm to hit Taiwan in half a century, left more than 600 dead, including 400 people from Hsiaolin village in Kaohsiung that was buried by mudslides triggered by torrential rains. The disaster plunged President Ma Ying-jeou into his worst political crisis since taking office in May 2008, amid widespread public criticism that his government's response was late and inefficient.

Surviving residents of Hsiaolin village filed the compensation suit in 2011, arguing that authorities failed to efficiently monitor mudslides and evacuate the village in time, resulting in massive deaths and financial losses.

The court, however, ruled that it was impossible for the officials to predict the occurence of mudslides that buried the village. The villagers said they would appeal the decision....

The landslide has completely blocked the Wugan Riverbed in Nantou County,caused by typhoon Morakot on 8th August,2009. Shot by Yiken, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Before the Washington mudslide, warnings of the unthinkable

Darryl Fears in the Washington Post: ... At least 18 people have been confirmed dead, and up to 30 more are likely entombed in a thick gray muck, swallowed by the land, perhaps never to be seen again. For two tiny logging towns — Darrington’s population is 1,400 and Oso’s is 180 — the death on such a wide scale is unimaginable. Bogged down by relentless rain that continued Saturday, workers have failed to unearth many bodies, all but assuring that the landscape will be preserved in the short term as a mass graveyard.

...[S]ome are now questioning whether many of the homes should have been built at all in the valley below a hillside that commonly shifts, sending mud raining down about once a decade. At least four new homes have been built since the last major landslide muddied the valley eight years ago.

The Snohomish County officials who control land use permits asserted last week that there was no way of knowing a giant mudslide would ever happen there. In fact, the area was primed for just such an extraordinary event, according to geologist Daniel J. Miller, who twice surveyed the area for local Native American tribes who rely on the river’s health for fishing and for the Army Corps of Engineers. He wrote in his 1999 report that the Hazel Landslide, as the mountain is known, was constantly shifting, experiencing landslides and would one day suffer “a catastrophic failure.”

...An ancient glacier is jutting out of the mountain, making its flat plateau unstable, Miller said. The Stillaguamish River was eroding it from below. Rows of conifer trees that helped to mitigate erosion by sucking water through their roots and releasing it into the atmosphere were chopped down by loggers. Rain fell on the bald spots they left, drenching dirt and sand, making the mountain even more precarious.

March 2014 has been a ­record-breaker, the wettest in Seattle’s history. Miller realized his warning was not heeded when he visited the site following a major landslide in 2006 that did not do nearly as much harm. He could not believe what he saw.

...Charity Prueher, 41 and raised in Oso, said homeowners rarely mentioned the slides. When they did, the coursing mud was considered a small disruption, more of an annoyance than a major problem. “They’re so content with the beautiful place where they live, they don’t think anything would happen,” Prueher said....

Lisa Bishop and her dog, Cody, with Northwest Disaster Search Dogs, watch as a Washington National Guard helicopter flies over the debris field caused by the mudslide in Oso, Wash., March 27, 2014. US National Guard photo

Risk of Washington mudslide ‘unforeseen’? Warnings go back decades

Ken Armstrong, Mike Carter and Mike Baker in the Seattle Times: While a Snohomish County official said the area hit by the mudslide “was considered very safe,” the hillside’s history of slides dates back more than 60 years. One expert says he was shocked when homebuilding was permitted after a big 2006 slide.

Since the 1950s, geological reports on the hill that buckled during the weekend in Snohomish County have included pessimistic analyses and the occasional dire prediction. But no language seems more prescient than what appears in a 1999 report filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, warning of “the potential for a large catastrophic failure.”

That report was written by Daniel J. Miller and his wife, Lynne Rodgers Miller. When she saw the news of the mudslide Saturday, she knew right away where the land had given way. Her husband knew, too. “We’ve known it would happen at some point,” he told The Seattle Times on Monday. “We just didn’t know when.”

Daniel Miller, a geomorphologist, also documented the hill’s landslide conditions in a report written in 1997 for the Washington Department of Ecology and the Tulalip Tribes. He knows the hill’s history, having collected reports and memos from the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. He has a half-dozen manila folders stuffed with maps, slides, models and drawings, all telling the story of an unstable hillside that has defied efforts to shore it up.

That’s why he could not believe what he saw in 2006, when he returned to the hill within weeks of a landslide that crashed into and plugged the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, creating a new channel that threatened homes on a street called Steelhead Drive. Instead of seeing homes being vacated, he saw carpenters building new ones. “Frankly, I was shocked that the county permitted any building across from the river,” he said. “We’ve known that it’s been failing,” he said of the hill. “It’s not unknown that this hazard exists.”...

US Airmen with the Washington National Guard in Oso on March 27, 2014, public domain

Mudslide death toll rises as bleak search continues

Heather Graf, Elizabeth Weise and John Bacon in USA Today:  More than 200 emergency responders and volunteers burrowed through tons of mud, crushed homes and twisted cars for a fifth day Wednesday in search for survivors and bodies buried in the mudslide that devastated the village of Oso.

Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington confirmed two more bodies were recovered and eight others located Tuesday, raising the death toll to 24. The grim discoveries and the knowledge that dozens of neighbors and friends remained missing darkened the mood of the search effort. The threat of flash floods or another landslide kept responders on edge.

Both Pennington and Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots acknowledged the chance of finding survivors was small, but said the effort remained a rescue and recovery operation. "We haven't lost hope. There's a possibility that we could find somebody alive in some pocket area as the days go on," Hots said. "We are coming to the realization that may not be a possibility, but we are going full steam ahead."

Hots said about 200 responders used search dogs, heavy equipment and their bare hands Tuesday to dig through the debris field — once a community of a few dozen homes on the Stillaguamish River offering breathtaking views of hillsides and a bluff. On-and-off rain throughout the day created wet roads and dangerous conditions for searchers....

Photo of the Oso, Washington mudslide by the Washington State Patrol, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Death toll from Philippine landslides, floods up to 22

Space Daily via AFP: Twenty-two people have been killed and nearly 200,000 others evacuated as floods and landslides hit a southern Philippine region still recovering from a deadly 2012 typhoon, the government said Tuesday.

Torrential rain struck the eastern section of Mindanao island at the weekend, unleashing a fresh round of misery for survivors of Typhoon Bopha, civil defence officials said.

"Major rivers overflowed, causing people to drown in areas still recovering from Typhoon Pablo," local civil defence operations officer Franz Irag told AFP, using the local designation for Typhoon Bopha, which struck the region in December 2012. "Many of the victims had not managed to rebuild and were staying in temporary shelters when they were hit by fresh flooding," Irag said.

Weekend floods and landslides killed eight people in Davao Oriental province and five in Compostela Valley, Irag said....

US Navy photo of a 2006 mudslide in Southern Leyte

Japan mudslide islanders take shelter as new storm looms

Terra Daily via AFP: People on a storm-battered island in Japan took shelter Friday, as another typhoon -- one of two looming in the Pacific -- looked set to sideswipe the coast. "We have advised people in all areas of the island to prepare for evacuation," said an official in Oshima where rain-triggered mudslides left 31 people dead and 13 others missing last week.

Around 10 percent of the island's roughly 8,000-strong population are reported to have fled ahead of the coming storm for fear of further landslides.

"After the town office issued the advisory by public address system, police and firefighters have been calling door to door," said Kazuhiro Mochizuki of the Oshima town office. There were 12 places designated as public shelters, including schools and community centres, he said.

Typhoon Francisco, packing winds of up to 160 kilometres (100 miles) per hour, was located east of the main Okinawan island around noon (0300 GMT)Friday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The storm centre was expected to pass by Oshima, some 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Tokyo, in 24 hours....

Typhoon Francisco on October 23, 2013, via NASA

Thirteen dead in Mexico mudslides

Space Daily via AFP: Mudslides crashed through several homes in eastern Mexico on Monday, killing at least 13 people after a tropical storm pelted the state of Veracruz with heavy rains, officials said.

The storm named Fernand weakened to a tropical depression after making landfall just before midnight, unleashing a deluge that flooded streets, homes and businesses in some towns and caused rivers to overflow.

Governor Javier Duarte, who had ordered the closure of schools before the storm came ashore, urged residents to heed any calls for evacuations and said the authorities remained on high alert.

Nine people died in the town of Yecuatla, three more in Tuxpan and one in Atzalan, he said. "They were all caused by mudslides on their homes," Duarte told a news conference....

The track of Tropical Storm Fernand, August 23-26, 2013, created by Cyclonebiskit, public domain

Climate change comes to South Korea

Steven Borowiec in Asia Sentinel: In recent weeks South Korea has been battered by torrential rains that have caused serious flooding, landslides and widespread property damage, killing 62 people. Stunning images of Seoul’s normally busy downtown streets filled with neck-deep water circulated around the world.

There are heavy rains every summer in South Korea, but this was something else. The storms are being regarded as evidence that the climate is changing and that the country must adjust to a hotter, wetter, more volatile reality. The South Korean government is quietly making plans to improve disaster preparedness and recovery capacity.

The events of July have all but confirmed what South Koreans have anecdotally thought to be true for some time: summers are longer than ever before with higher temperatures and heavier rainfall. A recent study by the Korea Meteorological Administration shows that the number of days with rainfall of more than 30 millimeters per hour has doubled in the last three decades. During this year’s midsummer rainy season, the rainfall in the central and southern regions was two to three times the average of previous years.

...South Korea has the benefit of a vocal citizenry that keeps government on its toes. ... The Seoul government has faced criticism after flooding led to deaths and paralyzed the city. The mayor has been criticized for neglecting the city’s lack of flood control infrastructure. He has since pledged W5 trillion over the next 10 years to install more effective drainage systems and reinforce homes in low-lying areas....

New anti-disaster system needed in Korea

Kim Rahn in the Korea Times: The landslide that killed 18 and injured a dozen others in southern Seoul has produced calls for the government to come up with a new disaster management system to more effectively counter torrential rain. While experts say reckless development projects were behind multiple landslides in and around Seoul, the death toll from these and floods caused by record rainfall rose to 59 nationwide with 12 others reported missing, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) Thursday.

Engineering experts and civic groups claimed that Seocho-gu Office’s park construction on Mt. Umyeon contributed to the disaster, as it carved into mountain slopes to build wooden trekking routes, an artificial lake and a valley on the steep slopes for “residents’ welfare.” “There have been signs of deterioration on the mountain, with some trees being pulled up by typhoon Kompasu last year. But Seoul City and the ward office didn’t set up any preventive measures. The death of 18 people was man-made,” a researcher at the Korea Research Institute on Human Settlements said.

He pointed out not only Umyeon but also other mountains are in a similar situation, with local authorities developing them recklessly under populist welfare policies. It was found that since May the city government has monitored 71 parks and hillside locations considered vulnerable to landslides, but Mt. Umyeon was not included.

Besides measures against thoughtless development, experts call for a paradigm shift in flood control and city planning following recent unusual weather patterns including the largest downpour in a century, which started Tuesday and inundated roads in Gangnam and Gwanghwamun in Seoul....

NASA image of Seoul

Landslide hits South Korea mountain resort, 13 dead

Yonghak Jo in Reuters: A landslide caused by torrential rain crashed into a South Korean mountain resort east of Seoul Wednesday, destroying three small hotels and killing at least 13 people, the emergency services said.

Wild weather has battered the central region of the country since late Tuesday, causing widespread flooding and travel chaos. The share price of insurers fell on fears that damage costs would run into millions of dollars.

At Chuncheon, about 100 km (60 miles) east of Seoul, emergency workers, aided by soldiers, were clearing away mud and rubble from buildings after rescuing dozens of holidaymakers.

"We were asleep and suddenly I heard a big sound, and then the ceiling fell down," Lee Beon-seok, a student, told a television station. A resident reported hearing what sounded like a train. "Then I heard someone shouting 'help me'. So I went out to see, and I saw a landslide had swept all over the area," she said….

A cityscape in Chuncheon, South Korea, shot by Mark Zastrow, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

This isn't about climate change – but it may be the face of the future

Steve Connor in the Independent (UK): Rain in Brazil, rain in Australia and rain in Sri Lanka. Rain is the factor that links all three large-scale disasters unfolding before our eyes in these very different regions of the world.

….Since 1975, disasters of all kinds have claimed the lives of more than 2.2 million people. Storms, floods, droughts and other weather-related phenomena were responsible for two thirds of these deaths, according to the UN's International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, which has warned that climate change is likely to increase the frequency and severity of these events.

…Scientists have emphasised that none of the three extreme weather events occurring now can be linked directly to global warming. Two of them, the floods in Australia and Sri Lanka, may be connected with a naturally occurring climatic phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, called La Niña, whereas the landslides in Brazil are the result of heavy, localised downpours falling on badly constructed homes built precariously on steep hillsides.

…Urban planning has also played a pivotal role in making Brisbane vulnerable. After 1974, authorities said the newly built Wivenhoue Dam would save Brisbane from severe flooding but what they didn't take into account was that the city and its surroundings would change dramatically over the next 35 years.

Rapid urban development, a growth in the population and the dubious practice of building on flood plains have all raised the flooding risk in areas once considered flood-free. The building of houses, roads, drains and other infrastructure has changed the way water flows through river catchments, said Professor Chris Eves of the Queensland University of Technology….

Aftermath of the flooding in Rio, shot by Valter Campanato/ABr, Wikimedia Commons via Agencia Brasil, under the Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5 Brazil)

More deaths feared as rain continues in Brazil

Robin Yapp in the Vancouver Sun via the Daily Telegraph: The death toll from mudslides and flooding in Brazil stood at 550 and rising on Friday night amid fears further rain could claim many more lives this weekend. People were queuing in cars to leave towns in the mountainous area north of Rio de Janeiro as forecasters warned that even continuous light rain could send tons more mud cascading down saturated hillsides.

More than 13,500 people have been left homeless. "It will keep raining until at least next Wednesday in the Serrana region of Rio de Janeiro. We are predicting a light but steady rain, which could lay the conditions for more landslides," said Luiz Cavalcanti, the head of Brazil's national weather institute.

The return of rain hampered the third day of rescue efforts in the two worst affected towns, Nova Friburgo and Teresopolis on Friday.…The extent of the damage exposed major flaws in emergency planning and disaster prevention in a country that aspires to attain developed-nation status in coming years.

It also highlighted the huge challenges that new President Dilma Rousseff faces as she strives to upgrade Brazil's creaking infrastructure before it hosts soccer's World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics two years later…

Mudslides kill 525 in Brazil

Environment News Service: At least 527 people have lost their lives as mudslides brought down by weeks of rain struck three towns in the Serrana region of southeastern Brazil on Wednesday. The death toll is expected to rise when search and rescue teams reach remote villages cut off by the slides.
Brazilian officials are calling the rains the biggest climate tragedy in the country's history. Floods and mudslides have swept away entire neighborhoods in towns north of the city of Rio de Janeiro and the downpours continue.

Rivers burst their banks and raged through residential areas built on steep hillsides, washing away hundreds of homes. Some 13,000 people have been left homeless. Power and telephone services along with bridges and roads have been severed by the slides, making it difficult for authorities to assess the full extent of the disaster.

President Dilma Rousseff, accompanied by Defense Minister Nelson Jobim and Rio Governor Sergio Cabral, flew over the mountainous region on Thursday to view the damage. "It's very overwhelming. The scenes are shocking," she said. "We saw areas in which mountains untouched by men dissolved. But we also saw areas in which illegal occupation caused damage to the health and lives of people," she said….

Landslides in Mexico take deadly toll

Terra Daily via AFP: A new mudslide killed 16 people and left four missing in Chiapas state, near water-logged Mexico's Oaxaca state where 11 others were missing following a landslide, authorities said Wednesday. The 16 were killed in the village of Reforma in Mexico's southernmost Chiapas state, said a state official, who added that four others were missing in the disaster.

"Sixteen people have died and their bodies have been recovered. There are eight children and eight adults," state public works chief Guillermo Castellanos said. Civil protection workers and state governor Juan Sabines were on scene as the search for the missing continued, Castellanos addedd.

Another mudslide in Chiapas was reported earlier in the village of Nueva Colombia. A woman and two children were missing there, officials said….

Locator map for Oaxaca, by Ek Balam